


Rekindling

by notvictor



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: And is also a writer, Angelo's, Canon Compliant, Hotels, M/M, POV Third Person, Past Tense, Poet Victor, Restaurants, Reunions, Reunited and It Feels So Good, Shakespeare Quotations, Viclock, Victor Trevor loves poetry, Victor comes back to London to find Sherlock as the consulting detective he is today, Victor loves Shakespeare, Writer Victor, because he's a huge nerd
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-21
Updated: 2014-08-21
Packaged: 2018-02-14 01:51:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2173545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notvictor/pseuds/notvictor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Because it was inevitable, with Victor Trevor finally back in London. No matter how long it's been, or will be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rekindling

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lesnuffles](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lesnuffles/gifts).



> Hey! Sorry this wasn't done within a week like I said it'd be, but double shifts kill. Also! In the future I might expand this into a much longer fic, if I ever work up enough muse to do so, but no promises, :)  
> Part of the Viclock Gift Exchange over on Tumblr.

As Sherlock held the restaurant door open, he still could not believe that man was actually there right before his eyes. All 6'2 of him, with his wind-mussed hair and his gray eyes and his nice black button down and jeans, with his charming smile and an infuriating tendency to pick the seat closest to the window to block his view when they weren't on a case...

"Victor!" An enthusiastic, booming voice drawled out, greeting him just as the pair was about to sit down. Victor looked up, recognising the heavy Italian accent, and his smile widened.

"Angelo-" Then Angelo approached him with arms wide open, and the two embraced as Sherlock stood there with a small smile curling up the corners of his lips as well.

Angelo released him, but still kept one large arm wrapped comfortably around his shoulders. "It's been ages! How've you been?" He asked.

"Oh, just fine. Keeping myself in trouble all right."

Angelo tutted at that. "Sherlock tells me you're in New York now?"

"Well clearly he's in London-"

"Oh please, Sher. You know what he meant," Victor said good-naturedly, giving him a knowing smirk. He turned his attention back to Angelo, and Sherlock watched as he made a pinching gesture to his own clean-shaven face. "The beard's longer, isn't it?"

"Ah, not on purpose. I've just been-"

"Too busy with work, his family, taking care of his sick parents, keeping up with his _connections_ , and dodging the Met for some minor infraction, again, to maintain it," Sherlock cut in.

Angelo mumbled something in Italian under his breath, exasperated, which made Sherlock roll his eyes. The man leaned in close to Victor and said, in that particular fashion where every word carried the same amount of weight, "At least he's never wrong."

"Never." Victor reeled their conversation back in. "But yeah, I'm in New York. There's lots of business opportunities, publications and things."

"Oh, yes, I remember you write!"

"Never got anything published yet. I've been rejected by, oh, gosh, _countless_ publishers, but I'm trying."

"That's the spirit. You'll be fine." Angelo waved it off, and Sherlock scoffed. The older man pursed his lips down to him as he began rubbing his hands with the apron. "I'll get a candle for you two, and anything you want, specially made."

Sherlock saw Victor nod his head and just _had_ to jump in before he did. "Red wine, too." He internally smiled at himself for the look he received from Victor.

Angelo gave them a thumbs up as he placed the candle between their menus, quickly followed by a pair of empty glasses and a bottle of red wine. Sherlock had been in the middle of examining its label when the older man had disappeared off to the kitchen, leaving the two of them alone once again. Sherlock was so pleased with himself for the whole thing, then Victor spoke up.

"We've been in contact how many hours? And you're already telling the whole world about me."

Sherlock looked up to find a wrapped straw pointed accusingly at him.

"Angelo and I only talked very briefly on the phone," Sherlock defended himself, but that hadn't helped his case at all, he realised, so he took a breath and decided to go down a new train of thought. "How long are you in London?"

Victor rested his hands atop the table, folding them neatly. "Five more days."

Sherlock nodded. He could work with that. "What've you been doing with yourself?"

"Oh, just been exploring the city, getting used to their summer weather, meeting new people, who all love my accent, by the way-"

"-Have you met anyone?" Victor paused just then, and the detective fixed him with a look. "You know what I mean." Leave it to Sherlock to just get to the heart of it all. Victor pursed his lips, eyes darting away.

"I did, for a while, but it didn't work out."

"Right." Sherlock cleared his throat. "... So you were saying?"

"Oh, um, yeah, what I've been up to. Been working on a collection of poems, actually."

"Your heart always did lie with poetry."

Victor gave him a smirk, because Sherlock knew that they both could quite clearly remember Victor reciting verses of Shakespeare and Frost and Wilde for hours on end back in their youth, just to pass the time. If there was anything he missed from those times, that was it.

Victor used some vague hand gestures, apparently getting the conversation back on steady footing, and said, "Only thing, is that I still have to find a publisher. I don't know how in-demand poetry is, but I'm working on selling the idea."

"Either way I doubt you'll be impressing anybody with insipid, overcomplicated declarations of love."

There was a pause for a second, and Sherlock thought he might have said something wrong until he remembered that this was _Victor_ , and noticed that Victor actually took it under consideration.

"You'd be surprised," he mused up to the ceiling.

"Right, I forgot those things are the only ones that sell. And the only ones you like."

"I don't know if I should take offense to that."

Sherlock finally smirked back. He was a master at derailing conversation. "What about the tea?"

"I knew you'd ask! Well, it's great. Really good. Still have the plantation running in India, and I pay for all the expenses to get it over to the city. My friend Sam designed the box, actually... I can make us a cup later." Victor cleared his throat. "I mean, if you want. My hotel is pretty close, only ten blocks away."

Sherlock could only nod his head in response.

"Now, tell me about you." Victor leaned over the table, his attention fully on Sherlock, licking his lips.

Sherlock found himself leaning forward as well. For some reason, Victor was magnetic, enchanting, interesting despite all his normalness. "You remember how I used to do those stupid jobs for kids at uni?"

"Yeah, I do. You followed people, you creep."

Sherlock sniffed. " _We_ _spied_ on people, for money."

"Good point."

"Well, I made something out of that. I'm a consulting detective."

Victor's eyebrows went up, skeptical. "Is that a legitimate thing?"

"It is now."

"But it's more serious now, isn't it? That's cool."

"I suppose. The cases I take now are all murders, but more or less, people come to me when they need someone smarter than Scotland Yard to help them. The Yard's homicide department asks for my help a lot, by the way," he added the last part with a raise of the hand. When Victor seemed satisfied with the explanation, he continued, "I work with John. That's my flatmate, and he writes, too. But not everything we do ends up on his blog, he left out some fun cases."

"I'm sure it's great anyway."

"My blog is better-"

" _Really_?"

"Don't be so pessimistic, Vic," Sherlock said in his best imitation of Victor, giving him an easy smile. "I have all the interesting things on mine."

"That's debatable. John writes about you and your cases, right? And I think you're the most interesting part of this whole..." He made another vague gesture with his hand, just as Angelo came back to take their orders. Sherlock looked absolutely flustered at that.

*********

London was beautiful at this time of day, with the sky dark, the sun just peeking out above the horizon, city lights on and bright and dazzling, the sound of traffic humming, and Victor taking it all in with an expression of wonderment as if he'd never experienced it before.

He was beautiful. In a word.

Sherlock was embarrassed to say that the sight took his breath away.

Their dinner had lasted at least a couple of hours, just so they could catch up with each other, and now they were walking so close that their hands brushed up together every so often as Victor led them in the direction of his hotel. Which, the hotel wasn't anything special. The rooms were surprisingly large.

Sherlock hummed his appraisal as he stepped through the threshold, shedding his coat.

He let Victor take it without too much of a fight. "Not bad. I don't think I ever stayed here."

"Don't think you ever had a reason to."

"Cases."

Victor only nodded.

As Sherlock went over to the bed and made himself at home, he watched Victor grab a maroon-ish coloured box. When he threw it, he just barely moved quick enough to catch it. He really didn't care about the box design made by his friend Sal, or something, so he tossed it back. "Can you make us a cup?"

"I just got this new, fancy cordless electric kettle, actually." The excitement in his voice made Sherlock grin like a child.

*********

Later, when a steaming hot mug of tea was pressed into his hand - Victor had refused to tell him the name, because _you should've read the box_ \- it was coupled with a look down to the carpet, where his feet rested. "You can take your shoes off."

And just the fact that Victor wanted him to stay was mind-blowing, though he figured that with the events of the whole night up until that point, it shouldn't have been as much of a surprise as it was. Everything was overwhelming his senses; the domesticity of it all made something warm flare up in Sherlock's chest.

He kicked off his shoes, took an experimental sip from his mug, then hummed. "I like it. Tastes like camomile." Victor gave him a small smile in return.

Sherlock brought his legs up to rest on the bed just as Victor had climbed onto the other side, balancing his own tea and invading Sherlock's personal space. He found it more comfortable than anything. So they sat like that for a while, just sipping tea from ceramic mugs with their feet touching and their elbows occasionally getting in each other's way.

Then Victor sighed. "I miss this." Sherlock didn't know how to respond to that, so he just let his eyes close, and Victor spoke up again. "I miss you."

Sherlock said, at length, "Nobody misses me."

"Nobody loved you, either." The tone was sarcastic.

"Yes."

Then there was a familiar pause, and Sherlock just _knew_.

" _What made me love thee?_ " Victor began, pulling that wistful hopeless-romantic voice that he seemed to think embodied Shakespeare's work as a whole. It did work, he conceded, listening to Victor's slow and soothing voice with bated breath. He cracked an eye open. " _Let that persuade thee there's something extraordinary in thee. Come, I cannot cog and say thou art this and that, like a many of these lisping hawthorn-buds that come like women in men's apparel, and smell like Bucklersbury in simple-time; I cannot; but I love thee, none but thee; and thou deservest it._ "

Insipid overcomplicated declarations of love aside, he did have to admit that it was, nice. He murmured amusedly, "Hey, Vic, was that verbatim?"

"You like it verbatim."

"That's debatable."

Victor huffed. "So? What do you think?"

Sherlock paused for a few seconds, making a show of looking up to the ceiling as if searching for the answer. He finished the last of his tea, and rested his leg fully against Victor's, enjoying the feeling of warmth seep through his trousers. Then he sighed reverently, "I think that love is a spirit all compact of fire, and you're rekindling it."

And he didn't think that Victor could've looked any more content.


End file.
